Dhru Purohit Show - The Shocking Truth About Olive Oil & Its Incredible Benefits For Your Health with Nicholas Coleman

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

This episode is brought to you by Momentous and AquaTru.  We know that olive oil has many benefits, including being a heart-healthy fat rich in antioxidants and polyphenols. But with numerous olive oil bottles on the market, it's hard to know which one to choose, especially considering that olive oil is one of the top three adulterated foods. Today’s guest is here to delve deep into olive oil and educate us on how to incorporate this oil into our healthy diets.   Today, on the Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with Nicholas Coleman, an international expert on olive oil. Nicholas shares olive oil's history and incredible benefits, guiding us through selecting high-quality oil. He also explains the differences between fraudulent labeling, adulterated oil, and how to cook with olive oil appropriately. Nicholas Coleman is an international olive oil expert, educator, speaker, and co-founder of Grove and Vine, a bespoke full-service olive oil procurement center. He has taught oil courses for The International Culinary Center, Zagat's Master Class, Bon Appetit, The Institute of Culinary Education, Cornell, Yale, NYU, and Columbia University, Platinum Country Clubs, and to critically acclaimed chefs and sommeliers nationwide. He has been a judge at The New York International Olive Oil Competition and the Sol D'Oro Southern Hemisphere Competition.  In this episode, Dhru and Nicholas dive into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): How Italians and Greeks use olive oil (2:17 / 2:17) The health benefits of olive oil (3:15 / 3:15)  The history of olive oil (11:35 / 9:33) Fraudulent labeling versus adulterated olive oil (18:12 / 16:08) Cutting olive oil with seed oils (22:18 / 20:16) How olive oil became popular in America (27:22 / 25:20) Should you cook with olive oil (38:12 / 34:58) Smoke point and denaturing oil (42:13 / 38:35) High-quality oils, levels of polyphenols, and filtering (43:52 / 40:15) Lack of regulation in the olive oil industry (55:29 / 51:56) What to look for in a quality olive oil (1:01:07 / 57:29)  Nicholas’ story and Grove and Vine (1:17:50 / 1:14:12) Also mentioned in this episode: Try This: How to Spot Fake Olive Oil Try This: Upgrade Your Honey  www.groveandvine.com discount code DP24 to receive $20 off either a 375ml or 1500 ml extra virgin olive oil membership For more on Nicholas, follow him on Instagram and Twitter.  Optimize your Omega-3 levels by choosing a quality fish oil made by and used by the best. Go to livemomentous.com and enter promo code DHRU to get 20% off any order.  AquaTru is a countertop reverse osmosis purifier with a four-stage filtration system that removes 15x more contaminants than the bestselling water filters out there. Go to dhrupurohit.com/filter/ and get $100 off when you try AquaTru for yourself. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The health benefits of the Mediterranean diet clearly show that the olive oil is the first thing in the pan and the last thing on the dish. They're not cooking in seed oils and only finishing an olive oil and consuming 20 liters of olive oil per year. Olive oil is absolutely great for cooking. Today we're talking all things longevity, food that is olive oil. Hi everyone, Drew Prode here. Today we have Nicholas Coleman on the podcast to talk about the power of olive oil, how to use it. Can you cook with it, which is a question that a lot of people have, and most importantly, how to protect yourself from all the fraudulent olive oil that's out there. Olive Oil is one of the top three most adulterated and fraudulent foods on the market.

Nicholas is going to help us navigate that. He has a deep background in the space. He's an international olive oil expert, educator speaker, and co-founder of Grove and Vine, a bespoke full-service Olive Oil Procurement Center. Nicholas has taught courses on all things olive oil at places like NYU, Columbia, Yale. He's finished top of his class from the National Organization of Olive Oil Tasters, and he's been a judge at the New York International Olive Oil Competition and many others. His expertise has been featured in the New York Times, GQ, Esquire, Food and Wine Magazine, Los Angeles Times, and all the other places. His mission in life is to get people excited about using high-quality olive oil because at the end of the day, it's not about the olive oil,

it's about the food, hopefully a clean Mediterranean diet that comes along with using high-quality olive oil. Stay tuned for a fantastic episode with Nicholas Coleman. Nicholas, welcome to the podcast. Here's something crazy I learned from you. The average American consumes a liter of olive oil a year, but is the key. The average Italian consumes 20, 12 liters a year, and the average Greek consumes 20 liters per year. So the question is, what do the Italians and the Greeks know about the benefits of olive oil that we seem to have missed the boat on here in America? Olive oil is the backbone of the Mediterranean diet. And in Italy and Greece, they look outside their windows and there's olive trees everywhere. Olive oil flows like

water in that region. So it's the backbone of their diet. They've been brought up with it. It's not something that comes from overseas. And they're really big into home cookery. And when you cook at home, you're going to be using more olive oil because you're constantly reaching for the oil, whether you're marinating something, whether you're preparing a salad or a vinaigarette, extra virgin olive oil is the first thing in the pan and the last thing on the dish because it's the ultimate sauce.

They're not covering their food and ketchup, mustard, and mayo like we do. It's olive oil is the primary fat. And you know, these cultures, they've been using olive oil for thousands of of years, and it's only been recently that the science has caught up to the reasons why olive oil is so important. Can you give us some of those top line reasons? Extra virgin olive oil is different from all the other fats that are available. Extra virgin olive oil, really in a supermarket, belongs in the produce section because the olive is a stone fruit related to the peach, cherry, plum, and apricot. So olive oil really is

a fresh fruit juice, as opposed to seed oils where they add heat or chemical solvents to extract the oil, and those seed oils have only been around for the last hundred years or so, as opposed to olive oil's 8,000-year history. So it's a raw fresh fruit juice. It's a mono-unsaturated fat, which is good for the heart. It contains 0% cholesterol, and it's high in antioxidants and polyphenols. So for so many reasons, it's very good for the body. It slackens digestion and allows the gut to absorb the fat-soluble nutrients in the food, and it's so versatile. It's another thing is the malleability of olive oil in cuisine is incredibly vast, whether you're having beans, bread, salads, soups, meats, seafood, even desserts with olive oil ice cream or olive oil and dark chocolate.

It's really the ultimate sauce and the most versatile thing in a kitchen. So for all those reasons, it's a fresh fruit juice that is used breakfast, lunch, and dinner as a lifestyle over decades of your life. Really, really good for you. Oh, that's incredible. You know, you were on a dear friend of mine, Max Ligubavis. years podcast. I really enjoyed your interview together. And from Max, I learned years ago that olive oil is actually the number one most studied fat, has the most data on it in terms of its

overall benefits. And speaking of that data, you retweeted something that he posted, which was a meta-analysis in 2015, a meta-analysis of over 30 randomized control trials found that consuming olive oil resulted in a decreased systemic inflammatory markers and improved endothelial. function. Who wouldn't want that? Lowered inflammation and better endothelial function. So it's just more and more every year. You look at the news. You look at science daily. Every year, it seems that there's more and more data talking about the benefits of olive oil. It's this beautiful food that has an 8,000 year history, yet it's a food that's critical to the future of our civilization. It's the backbone of Western civilization. As humans moved west, they brought the olive tree with them. That's why

today we have olive groves in California, the olive olive olive groves in Brazil, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Australia, New Zealand, the whole Mediterranean, South Africa, even Japan, they're growing olive oil or they're growing olive trees. So it's kind of taken over the world because everyone loves it. Everyone I talk to wants to talk about olive oil. It's not a controversial subject. Everyone wants to learn more and they want to find ways to incorporate it into their life more because it's one of the few foods that tastes great and is good for you. And that's so rare, especially in the world of fats. Fats are healthy. Not all fats are healthy, but fat is a critical component to health and brain development. And if you can get your fat from a raw fruit

juice, that is a much more ideal situation than a seed oil, which doesn't have the antioxidants and polyphenols and isn't a mono-unshaturated fat like olive oil. Yeah, you know, you said everybody loves olive oil. And I would say that they're, that's largely true. There's a few at the extremes that might be there. And fine, let them do their thing. Maybe some extreme people in this sort of carnivore space that are questioning the benefits of olive oil.

And there's some extreme low-fat vegans who would say that any inclusion of fat inside of the diet are things they want to stay away from. but those are, I would say, at the extremes, and they're a small minority that are largely coming up with their own sort of evidence, anecdotes, other reasons. They're not necessarily always looking at the data and the totality of data. But in the middle, across the board, whether somebody's vegan, whether somebody is traditional sort of omnivore following the Mediterranean diet, or whether somebody's more of a low-carb individual, higher fat, higher protein,

Those individuals all love olive oil. There's not the controversy that's around it. There's all the debates about seed oil. And I've had people in the podcast that have argued one way and I've argued another way around seed oil. I largely do my best to minimize seed oil exposure in my diet because I feel like I've been convinced on the data that I'd rather be moving over to things like healthier alternatives that have been with us for years that have stand the test of time and olive oil is going to be one of them. I do want to highlight to my audience that even though you might hear some people at the extremes,

largely olive oil is one of those things in the middle that everybody is excited about. Can I share one more thing as well? Please do. So another thing that I'm really excited about is that there's this whole group of individuals that are practicing what are called metabolic therapies when it comes to severe mental health disorders. like we've had individuals from Harvard on the podcast, Dr. Georgia Ede, Dr. Chris Palmer, who have been using a ketogenic diet to seriously treat and in some cases have no evidence of disease for severe bipolar disorder, severe mental health disorders. It's called

the brain energy theory. And the people that have benefited from that, they eat in all sorts of different ways. But regardless of what way they eat, the main thing that they've talked about on this podcast is that olive oil has been a big part of them getting the healthier amount of fats to drop their carbs very low, to get the benefits to help their mitochondria repair, and then reap the rewards of the brain energy theory, which is all about mitochondria repair. So we've had an individual in the podcast who is vegan, but has been following that, like the vegan keto diet, she uses olive oil. We've had people on the podcast that are doing higher fat diets, and they're also using olive oil as well, too. So that's another through line when it comes to the potential approach

of these metabolic therapies that I got very excited about. Olive oil connects people. Olive oil connects people, literally. This episode is brought you by Momentus. Taking care of your brain is as important as taking care of your body. One of the easiest things that you can do to keep your brain healthy is to supplement your daily diet with high quality EPA and DHA, which is something I've been doing for years. EPA and DHA are the most important types of omega-3 fatty acids.

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with the code D-H-R-U, that's me, Drew, for 20% off today. Give us a little bit more of the history around it from what you found, you know, about how long has olive oil been around and been part of our human diets? It's a great question. So olive oil originally 8,000 years ago was not used for food. It was used as a topical treatment and people would cover their bodies in olive oil and the fat in the oil would lift the impurities off the skin. And after they let the oil sit on the body, they would take a sickle and they would skim

the oil off and it would clean and nourish them, moisturize their skin. And then anything they infuse the olive oil with, they would then smell like that. So olive oil was involved in the earliest forms of perfumery. And the whole idea is that the skin is the largest organ in the body. And you're going to be absorbing that fat. So to put all, it's an olive oil is not just good to eat. It's actually really good for the body in olive oil soaps and olive oil. topical treatment. So that's the original use of olive oil because the olive, despite being a stone

fruit related to the peach cherry and the plum, is inedible off the tree. And in the history of humanity, we don't actually know when we began eating olive because an olive must be cured to leach this bitter, acrid substance out called glycosides. One theory is that since olive trees grow often near the sea and there's a salty water, that the olive fruit fell from the tree and actually brined itself in the salted water and humans first started eating olives from the ground out of the salted water. But then we learn that we can cure them ourselves to make them palatable. However, olive oil, you don't cure the olives. You take them fresh from the tree and you immediately extract it to get the oil. And you can eat it right away. Traditionally, they would lay it out.

They would crush the olives. And then what will come out is about 20% oil and 40% water. they would let that sit and naturally the oil has a lighter density and rises to the surface from the water and they would skim it off the top and they would have olive oil. And that's kind of the earliest forms of how they would start consuming this. Now where we're at now with olive oil is olive oil is this perfect bridge between tradition and innovation and it connects us to a deeper sense of culture, history, and gastronomy. So we have all this science of how to extract the oil from an olive now, which is very new. We're actually at a stage right. now where we're producing the highest quality olive oil in history. And that's not the case with a lot of foods. A lot of foods I'm tasting taste more watery and plumped up and strawberries taste less like strawberries should and bananas taste less like bananas should. And we've kind of been conditioned over decades to accept this mediocre fruit that isn't as good as it should be. Olive oil is different. And we'll clarify this because there's different categories of olive oil and there's a lot of fraud in the olive oil industry, and it's important to know what to look for when purchasing an olive

oil. But if you get a fresh olive oil that is from a single estate, that they harvested the olives early, that they're pruning the trees properly, that they're extracting the oil in a clean, sanitary environment, you have these incredible oils now that it's almost like wine. There are hundreds of different olives, and they grow different olives in different regions. So you take Italy, for example, in northern Italy, in Liguria, they grow primarily the Tajaska olive, and they tend to harvests of those olives later because of what's known as sea effect, where bodies of water can elongate the growing season. And when you harvest the olives late in the season, when they're dark purple, the oils are more delicate, ethereal, and light, and naturally pair great with basil pesto,

where you want the pine nuts, basil, and garlic to take center stage, and the oil should subsume and not overwhelm those ingredients. Whereas in Tuscany, just a few hours south, a frost can roll in and destroy the crop, so they harvest the olives very early. Those are, oils tend to be grassy, bitter, and peppery. And they cut through steaks, Ribolito, which is a Tuscanolini beans, black cabbage, stale bread, and lots of olive oil along with some other vegetables. Or Papa al-Pomodora, which is another, like, Tuscan tomato, it's almost like a tomato bread parm soup. So depending on which olives you use and where they grow and when you harvest them, you get all these different flavors. And that's another thing that's interesting about olive oil.

Olive oil isn't just olive oil. It's hyper-regional. And you can use different oils for different dishes, just like you could wine, just like you could honey, just like you do cheeses. It's a whole world of cheese out there. You don't just use any cheese for any culinary application. The same is true with olive oil. You know, the reason that we brought you on is, first of all, we, when I look at your content, you get people excited about olive oil, both the benefits, but also the culinary experience, which you just did in this, you know, monologue that you just shared. So I see you as the hype man for olive oil, the ambassador for the

olive oil industry and the olive oil fruit. So I want to get people excited about olive oil and incorporating into their diet on a regular basis, primarily because you're so eloquent about sharing this is that if you are using olive oil, especially in the cooking of food in your home, that means that you are one step closer towards whole foods, foods that you control, which is going to mean less added sodium, less added fats, including seed oils and creams and other stuff that you typically would get even at a well-intentioned restaurant. And you're going to be moving away from ultra-processed foods. So olive oil, yes, we're excited about olive oil, but as you say, we're excited about olive oil

because it gets people cooking, right? And the second part that's there as well, too, is that, as more and more of the world starts to realize the benefits of olive oil, which we have over the last 20, 30 years, which we're going to talk to you about, there has been an explosion of fraud in this industry. And a lot of people who think that they're getting high quality olive oil actually may not be getting olive oil at all or maybe getting the tiniest amount of olive oil that may potentially be either rancid or bad or other things. I wrote a whole news list. on this topic. And I actually highlighted how olive oil is in the top three most adulterated

and fraudulent foods on the planet. I believe the other one was honey. And I'm forgetting the third one. But we can link to the show notes below and we can link to the newsletter. Let's just take a quick moment to talk about the fraud in this space. And we're going to come back to the history of olive oil. And we're going to talk about how to use it, how to find out how to find good quality olive oil and how to navigate the whole space. How bad is the fraud and why is there fraud in this space? There has been fraud in olive oil for thousands and thousands of years. It's nothing new. We live in a world of lies. So much of what we think we're getting is a substitution of that thing for something else. And it happens with honey. It happens with truffles. It happens

with fish. People think they're getting one thing. They're getting something totally different. The reason it happens in olive oil is because when you have damaged fruit that you would see, maggots can lay their eggs in the olives, the fruit can be damaged by hail, there could just be a bad weather season. But when you have damaged fruit, you would never eat it in a jar. If you notice, all the olives you buy in jars are kind of like perfect. But when the olives are damaged, oftentimes those are the ones people will press into this ambiguous greenish liquid and sell it as extra virgin. Now, why is it so fraudulent? Because extra virgin olive oil can sell for more money than virgin olive oil, pure olive oil, or pomice olive oil. And the International Olive Council located in

Madrid, Spain, which the United States is a non-member of, leaves it up to the individual producers to self-regulate their oil. And only if they get caught would they get some sort of fine. But there isn't really a panel to taste, analyze, and determine which oils are fraudulently labeled extra virgin based on our imports. So that's why in many supermarkets, according to a UC Davis study back in like 2013, about 70% of the olive oils pulled from average supermarket shelves were not of extra virgin quality despite being labeled as such.

70%. Now, I want to be clear, there's adulterated olive oils, and then there's just fraudulently labeled extra virgin olive oils. And there's two totally different categories. Yeah, break them down. Adulterated oil would be something that is sold as olive oil when it's actually been cut with another type of oil, a seed oil, it could be cut with canola oil, vegetable oil, corn oil, et cetera.

That's a smaller percentage of the fraud out there than simply olive oil that's made from olives, but the fruit was damaged along the process and it has a higher level of acidity and off defects in the taste. A defect in olive oil is like a corked bottle of wine. It means the fruit was damaged somewhere in the process. It's not an opinion. If you give any taste panel a defective oil, most of the time, they can just smell it because there's a phrase, the nose nose. We actually taste with our noses.

We don't really think about that, but it's really true. And we taste that through the retronasal cavity. So you can smell it. Most olive oils, if there's something wrong with it, you can smell it and immediately know that it's defective. Defects can include fusty where the olives undergo anaerobic fermentation before the press. That can happen when they machine harvest the groves, and then the olives, Like the mills can only fit so much olives into the equipment to mill it into oil.

And if they're machine harvesting very fast in places like Spain, which is the largest producer in the world, where they have oceans of olive trees, 60 million olive trees in the region of Hymn. They harvest much quicker. The olives sit in giant piles. If you reach your hand in a giant pile of olive oil, it's actually hot inside because of the friction of all the fruit. And if it sits there too long, it undergoes anaerobic fermentation, and you get this defect called Fusty, which smells like cured olives or like black olive top of odd. So it's another thing.

When people think they want an olive oil to taste just like they're eating cured olives, that's totally incorrect because that would mean that the oil was defective with the fusty characteristic. Another defect is grubby where the olive fly will lay its eggs in the olive and you end up pressing the maggot of the olive fly. That has almost like a vomiting kind of taste. Another is a whiny vinegoury component where the olives undergoes undergo aerobic fermentation in the process, and you get this whiny, viney, vinegary characteristic that would

disqualify it from being extra virgin. So a lot of these fraudulent labeled oils have these sensory defects in them, but they're actually made just from damaged olives. And that would just be a different category of fraud than cutting it with another type of oil. But cutting it with another type of oil, that's out there in the world, too. That exists. Why do people do that? And where is a lot of that olive oil coming from? Fake olive oil. Because the reason they're doing is because olive oil is expensive. So they can cut it with 30% canola oil.

Most people don't know the difference. And they save money, especially these large multinational companies where they're shipping to all these different countries and they have all this volume. That's how that can happen. Is there any truth to the idea that there are, you know, the mafia is involved in some of this adulterated olive oil that sometimes comes out of Italy or other European countries. Is there any truth to that? I am not connected to that in any way.

I celebrate and champion world-class olive oil. So that like dark underworld, which surely exists, I simply don't have the firsthand experience to provide information for you. Got it. Most of that Italian olive oil, because you brought up a good point, like, oh, from Italy and other countries. so long as the oil is bottled in Italy, it can say packed in Italy on the bottle. And oftentimes these Italian olive oils that you see in the supermarket, the olive are actually coming from Spain, Greece, or Tunisia. So, and it'll say it on the back. So even an olive oil that has a very Italian name that says packed in Italy and everything about it seems like it's Italian. If you look

on the back, there should be a code and it will tell you the countries it comes from. And sometimes those oils that have Italian names, none of the olives come from Italy. Which may or may not be a bad thing, right? Like if the olives come from different parts of the country or different parts of the world, that may or may not be a bad thing. And if it's super nuanced, we can come back to it because there's a couple other more important questions that I want to ask. Not that that's not important. You can make, so one thing. No one country has a monopoly on quality. You can produce excellent olive oil all over the world if you plant the correct olive cultivar in the right microclimate, prune the trees, harvest at the right time, and mill it in modern equipment that's very sand.

Great oil all over the world. However, when you take olives left over from all these different countries at the end of the year, when it's not fresh, it's been sitting over, and then you ship them to Italy because Italy has the best name for olive oil, you just don't want to blend olives from all over the place that are old. Because you're not getting. You're not controlling. You're not controlling anything.

You're not controlling. And you might be drinking maggot juice, according to. what you were saying earlier. Which many people are because the olive flying habits in Olive Grove and and... Well, you know, the World Health Organization is trying to push on us to eat more insects which I'm not a fan of, but maybe they're trying to sneak it into our olive oil in some weird way, which, you know, I'd love to stay away from some maggot juice.

Right. And you just don't want them combined in a bottle. Yeah, yeah. So ideally, you know, just a little bit of preview. We're going to go through some more things here. But ideally you're looking for, you know, working with, or ordering from suppliers that are really going to be transparent across every sort of chain of where their olives come from. A little preview, we're not going to get into this now,

but when it was harvested, how long it's been, you know, in the bottle and a few other considerations. Well, before we get into all those, because I know you have a lot to say about that, and we're going to have a whole section on the podcast about that, give us a little bit more of the history of olive oil, especially in North America, in particular America itself. right you know i think of olive oil as part of sort of the human um innovation that's helped us live healthier and more productive lives just like fire was a technology and fire is largely assumed to be by many evolutionary biologists something that helped human beings um shrink their guts so that we didn't have to eat all day long because we were able to concentrate calories.

So as our guts got smaller, comparatively, let's say, apes and gorillas and other, you know, kind of similar genetically species. And those species, they eat all day and they poop all day. That's how they survive. We as human beings have been able to concentrate calories, eat less often, which allowed, in theory, our brains to explode in a very short period of time. So fire is a technology. I see olive oil as a technology in that same boat because we were able to, whether through happenstance, whether through the olive falling nearby, you know, the water and it briming and us eating it. And, you know,

however it ended up happening, truth is always strange in the fiction, by the way, right? I'm sure some crazy situation happened. We were able to extract this healthy fat, which gave us access to all these things in concentration that we previously wouldn't have access to inside of our normal diet. So when did America start to get a little bit of that wave that olive oil could be something that could help us in our diets and could be a better alternative to a lot of the other more processed things that we had been using to cook with? It's a great question. I want to answer in a couple stages. One, the olive tree was brought by Spanish missionaries up the coast of California. Probably, we don't know exactly when. But I think the first olive tree, the first

like person growing olives in California was sometime in the 1930s. So it was almost 100 years ago. However, California didn't start producing high quality olive oil until the 90s at the form. of the California olive oil council, which was formed by a group of people, including my very good friend, Paul Vossom, this incredible horticulturalist and olive oil expert, as well as Ridgely Evers of DeVero. They'd do wine and olive oil and some other people.

That was formed in 1992, and also Lila Yeager was involved in that. And the idea was to collect and disseminate information about how to grow olive trees. and phase two was not just grow olive trees, but how to produce extra virgin olive oil, which at the time they thought was like really hard. Because extra virgin olive oil, remember, it's not, I like to make this analogy, it's not the presence of intelligence, it's the absence of stupidity.

So in order for an oil to be extra virgin, it doesn't mean it has to taste great. It just doesn't have to have defects. That's what I mean there's no stupidity. There's no defects in it. But just because it's extra virgin doesn't mean it's great. And then you have a whole world of what I like to call class A extra virgin olive oils, which is a whole other nuance of aroma and flavor and texture. And they're really truly special.

And it's fleeting because olive oil degrades and dies over time. So olive oil really should be thought of, like I said, a fresh fruit juice. And it's really a race to the bottom of the bottle when you get a really fresh one. You don't want to buy a bottle and let it sit for like a year and a half. Right. You want to buy it from a good supplier, know when it had a harvest. state, right, some of other things that you had mentioned, and then try to consume it within a reasonable amount of time, which is why fast forward, one of the things you advocate for is

getting sort of smaller bottles instead of big, big bottles, because every time you open it, immediately the degradation starts. So pick a bottle that you can generally consume within a month or two. Is that accurate? Yeah, a couple months. I say don't buy smaller, buy bigger and consume more alva. Cook more your own food. You know, that's how we're going to get to the Mediterranean consumption patterns by cooking our own food and using olive oil in greater quantities. That term drizzle is wildly inappropriate for how one should be applying olive oil into the food. They should be pouring olive oil on. And a lot of food actually is kind of designed to be dragged through a puddle of olive oil. And the food is a vehicle to get olive oil into

the body. It's another theory. And that's also why when you go to the Mediterranean in certain parts, literally the seafood is swimming in all of the war. Hmm. This episode is brought to you by Aquitru. I've talked to so many experts about the importance of clean water as a foundation for great health. And this makes total sense because our bodies are mostly made up of water. So if we don't get enough, they literally, our cells literally can't function right.

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but I'm not going to say it by name. And Aquatrue is made with BPA and BPS-free plastic, and they also recently launched a new glass craft container, which I'm a huge fan of. Right now, Aquatru is offering my community an amazing deal. Just go to Drew Filter.com, D-H-R-U-Filter-F-E-R-T-E-R-R-com, and get $100 off when you try Aquatrue for yourself today. That's Drew-D-H-R-U-Filter.com to get $100 off when you try aquatrue for yourself. But another thing, back to how Americans started using it, because in the 90s, when the California Olive Oil Council began, more people started planting olive trees and trying to grow olive oil. But also, Also in the 90s, there was an anti-fat movement that fat is bad for you.

And that's why all this low-fat stuff started happening in grocery stores and people were avoiding fat at every level. But the problem with that is that fat satiate you and lets you know that you're full. And so consuming olive oil with whole, fresh, healthy foods allows you to actually eat less because you quicker get to a point of satiation. because the fat does that to the body. So that whole low fat thing, people were then just eating low fat stuff, but like not ever feeling satisfied with it and continuing to eat more, thinking they can eat more because it's low fat. It's a vicious cycle.

And then they're finally realizing, no, actually fat is an important part of a diet, but the quality of fat that you consume is critical in that capacity. Super important. Are you at all familiar with the crazy billionaire bioter? biohacker, and I mean crazy in a positive way. Brian Johnson, have you heard of them? No. So let me tell you just a quick little interlude on here.

Brian Johnson is the founder of Braintree Venmo. He sold it to PayPal. And he is a serial entrepreneur who is in tech and sold it and is now worth like around like a billion dollars and invested in multiple different startups. And when he started to think about what he wants his next journey and vision to be, he got very passionate about the longevity space. And he came on this podcast and told his story. He's been all over the news as the guy who's been trying to reverse his age and has a team

that he spends, he lives here in California in Los Angeles, he has a team on payroll that he pays $2 to $3 million a year to research all of the latest findings in science around longevity. He has his exact routine. He eats the same thing every single day. He has a perfect sleep score every night on whoop of a hundred, you know, except for, you know, a couple days that we're here and there. And one of his big things that's there because he generally does not want, you know, he wants to be an optimal body composition, right? And he doesn't, he wants every calorie to fight for its life. He told the story on this podcast previously.

And he shared with us that actually 25% of his total calories he gets just from olive oil. because the food's a vehicle to put olive oil into your body. Well, his is a little bit different. I do believe that, by the way, right? That's my preferred way to consume. He actually takes a shot. He takes one to two shots of olive oil a day. He's more clinical.

You know, he's like on 100 supplements a day. He's this, he's that. But he believes so much, him and his team believes so much in the science around olive oil and getting healthy fats as a part of the diet. He takes these one to two shots of olive oil a day from, of course, high quality olive oil, and that's how he gets 25% of his calories. I just thought it was an interesting anecdote of him talking about having this team that's looking at all the data out there of every possible things that he could do from all different sort of therapeutics,

which he does a bunch of, to the best diet. And, you know, he's landed on one of the key components being healthy fats from olive oil, the mono-insaturated fats that come along with olive oil, and about 25% of them, you know, coming from that. instead of his diet. The body is more like an automobile than we might realize. And it needs oil to run. And in that capacity, I would be interested to know if it's actually the first thing he puts in his body in the day. Because there's many people who talk about the very first thing is the shot of olive oil. And that way, whatever else you put in, you can absorb those nutrients. So it's not just what. It could also be to maximize it when and the order of

operations with which you consume things. Interesting. I'll share one other anecdote that's there is that obviously in the context, you know, so many experts that have come on this podcast have said, yes, calories matter and they're not the full story, right? I want to acknowledge that because like I'm the biggest fan of olive oil, probably secondary to you, except I have no formal training in this space. You actually are an expert taste tester and we'll chat about that. and you know a lot and have a whole business in the space, which will plug as well at the end. But I'm such a big fan of olive oil. And I found personally that I was eating so much olive oil that as I started to really focus in on optimal body composition, I was missing.

I felt so satiated that I was in a way under eating because I didn't eat a lot of protein growing up. Right? I'm just talking about my end of one story. And I found that the perfect combination for me was still have a lot of olive oil, but also include healthy, the amount of protein that I need based on the latest science that's out there that everybody tells you is one gram per ideal pound of body weight that's there. And so I want to acknowledge that while I'm like a huge fan of olive oil, anything that you eat in excess and olive oil tastes great. And even though it is sustain and energy, it's not necessarily the most sick. satiating food that's there. So I don't want anybody to walk away from this interview thinking,

I can pound olive oil left right and center and not gain weight. You absolutely, if you eat more calories than you burn, you can gain weight. That's just simple thermodynamics, right? That's just like the basics that are there. And that doesn't mean that we should be afraid of fat, in particular olive oil. It can be absolutely a healthy part of a regular diet, especially when we're cooking with it, which is why I want to get into the topic of cooking. There are so, many people for a long time that would tell me, do not cook with olive oil. Do not cook with olive oil. It's so fragile.

Just use it at the end. Use it to drizzle. And I started digging into this myself a little bit for a newsletter that I ended up writing for my list and saying, look, I'm looking around there. And it doesn't seem that this idea that we shouldn't be cooking with olive oil is actually true. Talk to us about that. The health benefits of the Mediterranean diet clearly show that the olive oil is the

the first thing in the pan and the last thing on the dish. They're not cooking in seed oils and only finishing an olive oil and consuming 20 liters of olive oil per year. Just think about this. Olive oil is absolutely great for cooking. It has a smoke point of around 400 degrees Fahrenheit, but when you fry foods, the ideal frying temperature is 365 degrees Fahrenheit. So you can fry an extra virgin olive oil. You can saute an extra virgin olive oil. You can slow cook an olive oil. You can marinate your food in olive oil. It has so many culinary benefits to it. And I think, this is just my opinion, take it as you will. I think a lot of this information that you can't cook an olive oil is spread by the seed oil industries to try to demonize what is otherwise

unassailable. If you have such an incredible product like olive oil and you're another type of oil, of course you're going to try to demonize it in one way or the other. Now, it has, sure, it has a lower smoke point than rice brand oil, which is over 500 degrees, but who's cooking over 500 degrees in their home? It's ridiculous. And if you are, turn your heat down. There's no need to do that. So I think it's demonized by seed oil industries that you can't cook with it as a method to sell more seed oils. But I think that's like a highly fly. lawed approach to the benefits of extra virgin olive. Wow.

So like a coordinated takedown attempt, some shady stuff happening in the background. How else are you going to assail this fruit? It's a fruit juice. What doctor tells you that fruits are the enemy? I'm unaware. Maybe I'm ignorant to that, but I think fruits are healthy in general. Yeah. In general, from looking at a lot of the things that are there, I tend to stay away from,

I particularly don't eat any fried food. That's just my own personal thing that's there. And if I would fry, I probably would use, like, if I would have like a fried, if like my wife would want sweet potato fries. I kind of choose the air fryer over that, you know, just to like minimize any kind of, you know, denaturing that's there minus like the hot air. I'm still, I feel like the jury's out for me about what recommendations would be there. If somebody is deep frying is true avocado oil, maybe a better option for them. are some of these alternative oils that people are, you know, making like a zero acre farms.

I'm not sure and I'm not going to speak to that. The question is, why would that be better? I would phrase it that way. I think these other oils actually have to prove why they're better, not take the oil that has all the science behind it of being healthy and demonize that. These other oils need to actually show the legs that they stand on in these capacities. And even if they do have a smoke point that could be cooked, similar to olive oil, which I'm sure they do. You can cook an avocado oil, et cetera. You definitely don't have the Mediterranean, like you are not going to make authentic Mediterranean cuisine cooking an

avocado oil. You're just out of the boat. You're in a different ballpark all together right at the beginning. So that's where it's like, are those oils as versatile to as many foods? Does it give you the pleasure and the enjoyment of eating? Because eating food should be pleasurable. And in no way do you, have to sacrifice health and pleasure. Is smoke point the same thing as sort of structural integrity? I've heard some different sort of thoughts on that, right? Like smoke point is kind of one thing, and then sort of the, you know, the sort of structural integrity of the particular oil, the atoms that make up that oil, and its ability to sort of withstand sort of denaturing, right? Is there a difference between those things? The smoke point is when the oil begins to break down and denature. And that's around

400 degrees for extra virgin olive oil. If you see the smoke coming out of your pan and the smoke is black, you've denatured your oil. Stop. Start up. Yeah. Don't continue going forward. But it's actually really hard to get to that point at home cooking.

Like I said, I think this whole being scared of olive oil for the smoke point is one of the most wildly overblown situations. And it has everyone kind of obsessed with it. and yet in home cookery, you're cooking some eggs, you're cooking to chicken breast, you're cooking some vegetables, you're more sauteing than you are going at the highest possible temperature. Unless you're doing like a wok style cooking with a very, very, very thin bowl and a giant flame underneath it. So it's hitting directly a giant flame, this very thin bowl. That's where I think that those temperatures can get super high and you might be better with

another oil, but for 90% of your cooking, especially everything Mediterranean, like the whole idea with Mediterranean diet is they're using olive oil as the oil that they're cooking in. Is one of the things that protects olive oil from heat, the polyphenols that are part of the olive oil? There's, yes, that's a great point. The higher quality olive oil you begin with, the longer and more resilient it is to denaturing and breaking down, which is why starting the starting with a clean, high-quality, fresh olive oil, high in polyphenols and antioxidants. I'm not talking about, there's some people, there's this race for polyphenols. I see now when people talk about this.

And I think that's also deeply flawed that if you're only going for olive oil as like a medicine with these polyphenols, there's an error in that because many olive oils have high polyphenols that aren't advertised as high polyphenol oil. I think that's a real gimmick that people are jumping on, the race for polyphenols, which I see growing. But it's just very, what are we talking about? We were talking about the polyphenols in olive oil? Oh, the breakdown. Protecting it. So when you get a good quality olive oil, you can cook with it, and there's a protective

effect because of the polyphenols, that's something that I came across when I was writing my newsletter content on it, summarizing what I was reading, just wanted to see if there was some truth to that. It's in a way, it's more stable. And you're starting from a stronger place of stability before you then begin degrading it. Another really important thing, if you really want to get into cooking with olive oil, And just in general, olive oil, people think unfiltered olive oil is somehow healthier for you or better for you because there's micro and macroscopic olive sediment floating in the bottle. This is not true. The best producers in the world won't even let the oil off their premise until it's been filtered. Think about it. The whole idea with olive oil is you're separating the oil from the pits solids and water and pulp. So the idea that you want those bits in the oil, which contain water in it and break down is completely antithetical to what high quality olive oil. oil is. You want the olive oil to be filtered, so you're just left with the lipid and not any of

the micromacroscopic sediment, which settles at the bottom of the bottle, the water escapes, and eventually that oil will have a defect in it called muddy sediment. And that's from that pulp that kind of sits at the bottom of a bottle. If you look at a bottle and tip it upside down, you'll see it's this like gunk. You don't want that gunk in your oil. Why would you want that? It makes sense. You mentioned something earlier in the interview. You said that... Oh, real quick.

And the first thing that burns when you cook with olive oil are those olive oil. Those little bits. That's why you want a filtered olive oil in general for finishing and for cooking. Like really fresh, high-quality filtered olive oil is actually a good thing. That's awesome. You mentioned something earlier in the interview. You said that today we're actually making some of the best olive oil that we've ever made in human history. Why is that? What's going on today that allows that to be possible?

It's a great question. I'd say it's kind of twofold. One is there's been a proliferation of olive oil competitions around the world, which ultimately are causing producers to have to make a higher quality oil to submit to these competitions. Now, how do you make a higher quality olive? All olives start their life green and rip into a deep purplish black, and the color reflects the stage of maturation. The earlier you harvest the fruit when it's primarily that yellowish, lemony green, the less oil is in it, but the more grassy, vibrant, and peppery that oil is going to be, the higher levels of antioxidants and polyphenols,

but the less quantity you're going to get. So you're sacrificing quantity of oil to get a higher quality of oil. The later you harvest, when they're dark purple, the more quantity of oil you're going to get, but the more delicate and ethereal the oil is going to be, and that's going to have lower levels of polyphenol. We're seeing producers begin to harvest earlier in the season when the olives are green, which gives you a more vibrant dynamic oil. There's less damage that can happen to the fruit because as it sits on a tree for longer, there's more weather issues that can come.

There's pests that can destroy it. So you're getting the olives and you're getting the oil really earlier in its life. Remember, we don't make olive oil. We find olive oil. Nature makes olive oil. We're just extracting the oil from the rest of the fruit. So getting the oil at a younger stage of its life gives you a longer shelf life, higher antioxidants and polyphenols and a more grassy, vibrant peppery,

I think typically like an exciting oil that kind of enlivens all the ingredients you put with it. So there's that. People are harvesting earlier. They're getting more vibrant oil. And then you have these modern machines. So another thing people think, they think you should buy first cold pressed olive oil. Everyone thinks you should buy, oh, it's got to be first cold pressed.

But actually, the best producers in the world, they cold extract their oil. So the cold press method is called the traditional method, and the cold extracted method is called the modern method. In the traditional method, which has been going on for hundreds, if not thousands of years, olives would get crushed by granite wheels, and then they would get stacked on fiber-woven mats called fiscoli into what looks like a 100-layer lasagna. That then gets pressed on a physical hydraulic press. What comes out is approximately 20% oil and 40% water.

the remaining 40% are the pithskins and pulp left over on the mats. Now, the problem with this method is that as those olives are getting crushed by the wheels, they oxidize and a lot of those volatile aromas escape. Remember, the volatile, like the olive is a fragile living thing, and capturing those aromas so they end up in the oil and in your hands is really important. And you can take the same olives and bring them to two different mills, and the experience and expertise of the millers will determine whether, that oil will have those volatile aromas or if they'll get kind of destroyed in the transformation

process of fruit to oil. Very important, that pathway. So the traditional method, the olive paste oxidizes during that time and those mats often aren't cleaned properly so you get unwanted residues into the paste, which then ends up in the oil and the increase of defects goes up. Whereas the modern method, which is called cold extracted, or in Italian it will say Estrato Afredo. The olives are run through a series of vacuums and centrifuges, and the olive paste is never exposed to oxygen. So what you end up getting is a sharper oil for more ripe fruit. It's a more sanitary process. And it's actually faster, which is really important. So you can mill more olives quickly so they're not sitting around. So a lot of people think you should buy first cold press.

That's an outdated term. The best producers cold extract the oil. One of the challenges that's happening in this world of wine is that there are, as I understand from my friends that are in this space, moving from olive oil to wine for just a quick second to set up an analogy and a question, there are over 200 additives that can be added to wine in the manufacturing process that don't have to be disclosed to the end consumer who's buying it and don't have to be, you know, included in the label that's there. So chemical additives, other stuff, extractants, deodorizers, all sorts of different stuff that can be used in the manufacturing process of wine.

At the end of it, you know, all that really has to be sort of noted is the fact that this is just wine, right? You don't typically see ingredient label on a wine, but, you know, the sellers don't have to disclose it. Some of those things are chemicals, additives, other stuff that may not have the full body. of testing that would be needed. And, you know, there's some questions as to, is this why some people, you know, are getting headaches, especially with things like red wine, compared to the lead to how wine was made in the past. So now that's led to this whole movement of natural wines

and people disclosing, you know, there's companies out there like dry form wines that say, okay, we test our wine to make sure there's no mold in it. There's no additives. We're sourcing from very specific suppliers. Is anything like that happening in the olive oil space? The olive oil is different than wine in the sense that wine is a design product. Wine does not exist in the grape. Wine is created by people from grapes. So there's a design element to the thing itself. Whereas as I said before, the olive oil is made by nature and in the olive, you just need to remove it from the cell walls and remove it from the rest of the solids. So nothing can be added to olive oil. And if it is, then it goes back to this whole, it's being adulterated

or it's fraudulent, et cetera. But, you know, no quality supplier or, you know, manufacture of olive oil is going to be doing something that would be chemicals, additives, etc., unless if they're pulling something shady on you. Yes. It is oil extracted from olives solely by mechanical means. That is, and then it has to have no defects, and then the acidity has to be below 0.8% for it to be legally labeled extra virgin status.

So there's nothing added, and that's where it's different in wine. If something's wrong, they can correct it in the aging process. But with olive oil, the moment you extract the oil and separate it from the solids, pits, and water, the game is over. There's nothing you can do to make that oil better. It's just constantly dying. And after approximately two years, olive oil becomes rancid. Things that can accelerate that are exposure to oxygen, exposure to light, heat, and time over the course of time. But nothing's added to it unless you get into that whole world

infused or macerated olive oils, where they will take something like fresh chilies, and you can either take an olive oil that exists and infuse it with chilies, which would be an infusion, or really the best way to do it is a maceration where in the mill, they actually crush the olives with the chili peppers, and you actually, from the spout in the mill, you're getting your macerated chili oil. Now, that oil legally cannot be labeled extra virgin because it's been devourced. virginized by this other item that's been added to the oil. But extra virgin olive oil, by law, there's nothing added to it. It's just oil from olive. It doesn't necessarily mean it's going to taste great, like I said, because it just means there's no defects in it. Another thing that's

big is people think organic olive oil is the most important thing. It needs to say organic, but you can have organic olives that the olive flies laid its eggs in and you're pressing the maggot of the olive fly and your olives are organic and the oil is terrible. Or they could be harvesting it during the rain when it's kind of muddy. And as the olives come down, they're with mud. So many things that can damage the fruit. So just because an oil says organic doesn't mean it's going to taste good and doesn't mean it's healthy for you.

And many of the great producers can grow organically, but they're not labeling it. There doesn't say organic on the front. But I think some of those bottles that on the front, kind of the biggest letters are organic, and you don't know the olives it's made with. You don't know the region that it comes from. and you don't know how fresh it is because it doesn't have a harvest date, those are ones that I kind of red flags go up.

Great producers telegraph what they do. Questionable producers hide what they do by words that don't necessarily have the type of meaning that people may think they have. One of the challenges you mentioned in the United States in particular, there is no regulatory body. It's all pretty much self-regulated.

You can make different sorts of, of claims, and unless you get caught, companies just kind of do what they do. What are the councils, what are the nonprofits, what are the consumers sort of groups that are out there that make the guess work easier for people who are listening today to know that you're going to be getting quality olive oil? Well, when it comes to olive oil, the proof is in the taste. I would try to find a retail place if you want to shop retail that allows you to taste olive oil before you. by them because it's really hard to know without that. But do you think, can I ask a question about that?

I know that's your answer and you're deep in the space. The question I'm always thinking about is that like even as into olive oil I am, I don't know if I have a palette that has been developed to know the difference between what's truly good and what's not. So if I don't feel comfortable, I'm guessing my audience may not feel comfortable. What are your thoughts about that? Well, like anything, you got to get to know your olives. How are you supposed to know about olive?

Well, if you don't know your olives. Can I add something to that? Sure. So, you know, because this episode has a far reach, I'm always trying to make sure that I bring on experts like yourself. And I give you free reign to say, like, here's the best way to do this, right? And naturally, everybody comes in with their respective field and area and is advocating for the best way to go about it. And I always want them to, right? Because there's going to be people that are on there that want the best of the best of the best when it comes to that category.

And a little bit of preview, you know, you have an entire organization that helps people find and purvey and get the access to the best growers that are out there in olive oil. Right. So I want you to talk about that. I want you to, you know, highlight that. Then there's the flip side, which is there's a person that's listening to they and they're trying to make progress in their health. And they're trying to just make sure that they start to include and move away from, you know, seed oils that they might have been using or they're eating out a lot and they want to start including regular olive oil. And we've had on people like Dr. Bill Harris, who started this company

called Omega Quant. And, you know, he highlights this idea and they're all about fish oil. He's like, look, fish oil is so protective that as long as you're getting good enough in the fish oil category, I'm not saying that this is a case with olive oil, that I'm more focused. And at least with fish oil, you can actually test. He developed a test. It's called a mega index, and it's through this company called a mega quant, no affiliation. It's so important to get your omega 369 ratio in the optimal category. It's so protective based on all the science and research that's out there. Every hurdle I put that somebody has to jump, which might be nice for Drew, he can get wild caught, you know, fish oil, and it has to be refrigeration.

but it's so protective of adding too many hurdles, somebody might say, oh, that sounds interesting, but okay, how do you do it? And they get distracted and they move on to the next thing. So I like to provide solutions at both ends of the spectrum. And listen, I want you to be truthful to you, right? You've got to be truthful to you and I've got to ask on behalf of my audience, right? So in a way, is there the good enough that is it the California olive oil council that you mentioned, is it some kind of you've looked or tested and generally this big box store has the better out of the options that are there? And for people who want to get serious, you know, there's a better alternative like the company that you've started. What are your

thoughts on that? To your point, you bring up many, many great points. It's a very exciting conversation. I don't think you, you don't need to have the best olive oil to get the benefits of olive oil. You just need to get out of the defective oil in the sense that. You're not, you don't need to get out of the defective oil in the sense that the defective oils that are fraudulently labeled extra virgin, they don't taste good. And if they don't taste good because they have off defects in them, you're not going to consume as much of it because it doesn't taste good. The irony, some people say, oh, if you buy a nice bottle of olive oil, you have to use less of it. But the irony is, when you buy a nice bottle of olive oil and it tastes great, you want to consume more of it,

not less of it. So I don't think you need the highest quality olive oil and spend $50 a bottle to get those benefits. But I do think if you're going to a supermarket and you've been told extra virgin is the highest quality oil you can buy and you see some extra virgin olive oils for $7.99 and other extra virgin olive oils for $35. Those are going to be wildly different categories of extra virgin olive oil. And perhaps the industry actually needs to upgrade their, create a new standard that's beyond extra virgin in a way because that doesn't actually quantify. Like in no way does the term extra virgin tell you what that oil is going to taste like or how that oil will affect your food in no way.

So by proxy. Think of it like this. It's really important. No, I feel like I understand the knowledge. It just says red wine. If a bottle just says red wine, what do you know about it? You don't know where it's from. You don't know the grapes it's made with.

You don't know the year it was harvested. You can't be an educated consumer if you don't have that information. But I guess the way I would push back a little bit, and this is why we have long format podcasts, right? I'm not trying to convince you, but we're actually trying to record a healthy conversation so that the end, the person who's listening ends up winning, right? And it's also for clarification for myself. So just because somebody knows where an olive oil is from, that may not necessarily guarantee good quality, right?

Correct. Now, there are some things that would guarantee, generally speaking, good quality. So the person should be looking for, individuals can be looking for an olive oil that has a harvest date, right? And freshness is a key quality component. The first thing I look for in any bottle is the harvest date. Okay. So if you are coming across any bottles and they don't have a harvest date, you know, know that for the same price point, you can find most likely it probably is better, but at least it's more transparent. You can find for the same price point a bottle of olive oil just by seeing is that.

there a harvest date on it. That's number one, would you say? And generally, how much time period should have not passed for you to know that that harvest date is still good, right? What are you looking for in a harvest date? I tend to buy within one year. So in the northern hemisphere, a place like the Mediterranean or California, they will harvest in October and November. So at this point, it's now February 2024. The freshest oils on the planet are from the October in November, 2023 harvest. In the Southern Hemisphere, they harvest in April, May, and June. So we're building up toward the 2024 harvest. So in July or August, I'd be looking for Southern Hemisphere Oil that was from the May 2024 harvest. That oil, you always want to buy it within the year of the

harvest. So a Northern Hemisphere, 2023 harvest oil, I would buy that through January 2025, because then you're going to start seeing the new oils come onto the market. So they have approximately you want to buy it within that one year because then think about it, a year later, there's a new harvest. And the previous oil is now not as good as not as desirable. I actually think they should go down in price. Yeah. I don't think old oil should be sold at the same price is super fresh oil.

So on our checklist, wherever you're going, even if you're shopping at a big box store, a whole food, a Costco, whatever. And sometimes you can actually find oils that have harvests, overstates inside of there. Absolutely. Right? There's different ones that are out there. So number one, you're looking for a harvest state.

What's number two? What's the next thing that you look for? The type of olive that's in it. And that's like if you like wine, are you going to buy a Cabernet Sauvignon? You're going to buy a Merlot? Actually, people buy wine based on the grape, kind of more than anything else. They find a grape they like. And then they know that, hey, if I buy wines made with this grape, I can make an educated

guess that that flavor profile is going to fit my palate and the food I like to eat it with. This is the same with olive oil. And this is where I mentioned, like, getting to know your olives is so critical. So if you like more delicate, soft, mellow, sweet oils with hints of almond and banana that are more ethereal, and Arbikina oil, which is typically from Spain, but it's now grown around the world due to its ability to be grown in super high density production and machine harvested, those oils tend to be light, delicate, and sweet. Also, the Tajjaska olive of northwest Italy tends to be. very delicate and sweet. As opposed to the Coratina olive, which is typically found in the

southeastern part of Italy, has some of the highest antioxidant polyphenols of any olive based on the DNA of the olive. And those are going to be grassy, bitter, and peppery, and they're going to cut through and brighten up your foods. So getting to know your olives allows you to say, like, hey, that's a fresh oil, has a harvest date, and it's made with the Corotina olive. You can make make a very educated guess, then that's going to be a robust, grassy, peppery, assertive olive. oil. Whereas if I saw one made with Arbikina olive from the same harvest, same freshness, I can make an educated guess that's going to be delicate and sweet and mellow. And you might want to buy both because you might want to use the delicate oil with light fish or potatoes or

eggs or delicate herb dishes where you don't want the oil to overwhelm the ingredients. And you want the grassy peppery oil for soups and charred meats and seafood where you want the oil to cut through and brighten everything up. So it's very similar to wine. There's a lot of options. Is there one varietal or type of olive species that is good for that you find is like the most robust, right? That it's good for in particular cooking because we want people to cook more with olive oil, right? Like meat and veggies. What is your favorite go-to for cooking meat and veggies? And that's complicated because it depends on what type of meat and what type of vegetable and what that's going to be paired with.

For example, the preparation of the food is very important. Is it raw, baked, grilled, or fried, the intensity and weight of the food can correspond with the intensity and weight of the oil. Now, typically for me, I like to think of it regionally. So if I'm trying to recreate a Tuscan dish, the most authentic way to get that is actually using Tuscan extra virgin olivelo and pairing it with a Tuscan wine. If you want a Spanish dish that you want to make, like Salmerejo, you want to use a Spanish pequequal oil for that. So it's hyper-regional. And that's where it's interesting. This is not a one-size-fits-all approach to eating.

Like we can think of olive oil as one thing, but that to me isn't nearly as interesting as getting into the nuances of it. It's the same with salt. And the two easiest ways, just whoever's out there, I don't know what camera is looking at me, but this is really important. The two ways to improve the quality of your food at home, without having to improve your culinary ability is by using a high-quality fresh olive oil

and buying really nice sea salt flakes. And if you take one, the same piece of shrimp, cook the exact same way, and on one shrimp, you use fresh, high-quality olive oil and really nice sea salt. And on the other one, bad, fraudulent labeled, cheap olive oil and sandy, low-quality sea salt, the average consumer will think this shrimp

is a higher-quality shrimp. but the only difference is the oil and the salt. So when it comes to buying ingredients and cooking food at home, the quality of oil you buy and the quality of salt is so fundamental to making that piece of tomato taste incredible or that fish to taste perfect. And it's often invisible those two things. So people don't really notice that,

but that is such an easy way to take your cooking to a whole other level. And you want to put the olive oil in the pan and cook it in the pan, but then when the food is done and it's on your plate, that's when you use the oil raw, where the flavor of the oil is more separate and distinct. It also has the highest levels of antioxidants and polyphenols when used raw, as well as finish with sea salt flakes, just coarsely sprinkled on top of it where part of the salt melts into the food and the other part of the salt sticks up and gives an added crunch. So it's just such a simple way to take anything you make to another level.

Going back to your setup for this question of, you know, what are the things we should be looking for? is the idea that if you also are buying an olive oil, that number one has a harvest date, and number two, you can understand what type of olive is in there. As a default, you're not getting a blended olive oil, which you can't trace the quality of. Is that the idea that if you're getting olive oil where it's like, hey, this is a particular olive that is making up this olive oil, you're staying away from blended oils? Yes and no. Obviously, you don't want your olive oil cut with other oils, which is what light olive oil is. People think light olive oil somehow healthier for you. Light olive oil just means it's

been cut with another type of seed oil and there's less olive oil in. And when I said blended, and yes, we want to stay away from light olive oil and we want to stay away from cut olive oil with seed oils, but more that a lot of brands, they won't tell you what type of olive is in it because they'll say that they're getting a bunch of olives from a bunch of different places and they're trying to match their consistency of, you know, flavor profile, price, whatever. So are you Are you generally saying that in an ideal world, we're steering away from those types of blended olive oils? Yes and no.

And let me clarify that. Yes, we're staying away from blended olive oils from all different countries. When you blend, there's a phrase, what grows together goes together. If you take olives from all these different countries with all the different production methods, harvest it at different times and blend it together, it's like a menagerie of questionableness. but if those olives are grown together and harvested together and milled together in a region or in a state, you can really control that. So some of the great olive oils are monocultivar oils, meaning they're only made with one type of olive,

but some of the other best olive oils in the world are field blends. And in central Italy and Tuscany and Umbria, they typically make olive oils made with the Frantoyo, Moriolo, and Latino olives. And it's a field blend, and those are some of the best olive oils in the world. And those olives grow together. From a taste perspective, you're saying. Best olive oils in the world from a taste perspective? Is there something objective that's separate from taste that you're saying that they're best?

Many of the producers who grow, though, Tuscany and Umbria are highly unique in, like, the exceptionalism of the high-quality, small producers that grow there and harvesting earlier in the season. Just many of those producers have won, like, best in class at awards, and they're based in Tuscany, Umbria. And that blend, Frantio Moriola and Lachino is just like a classic blend. for a certain flavor profile because all those olives contribute their own elements to the blend. So a blend of olives, ideally from a single estate or region, can be incredible. And a monocultivar oil made with only one type of olive can be incredible.

But also, both of those can be terrible if you don't prune the tree properly. So each branch is receiving equal parts sunlight and oxygen and harvesting at the right time and getting the olives from the tree to the mill in mint condition. quickly as possible. There's so many ways that an oil can get damaged and it's not only about one thing. And this one master taught me about a different subject, but I thought it really applied. He said, when it come, and I'll just relate to olive oil, when it comes to olive oil, the most important thing is everything. And only then can you break it down into each individual component and was that done correctly? And that starts with planting the correct olive in the correct

microclimate. So you get a balanced fruit during the available growing season. So at the moment of harvest, your fruit is healthy. So the one thing I want to make sure that we don't leave people with is that olive oil, and I feel like this is the unfortunate, I'm not a big drinker. I have wine once in a blue moon. But because wine became so in a way snooty, you ended up having this thing where it became sort of unreasonable for a lot of people, and they felt like I'm not good enough to kind of go down that space. So we have sort of a bunch of different hats that we're wearing on today's podcast, right? And one of the hats is just getting people excited about olive oil that is truly olive oil, right? And becoming a more aware consumer to know that, hey, olive oil is one

of the most adulterated foods in the world and potentially fraudulent in some instances. So be aware and make sure you're actually getting real olive oil. And then there's like the way that I think of like my friends who are like really into coffee and the region and the place, you know, there's some buckets of people who like, they're going to know all the ins and outs of coffee that's there. And I want and I celebrate. You never want to yuck on somebody's yum. If that's what they're into and they want to geek out, like this is the beauty in this day and age that we live in. And along the way, we're just helping people understand that, hey, look, having coffee is great. There's a lot of data that's on it. Okay, yeah, don't have too much. And

mostly let's stay away from Starbucks and things that are sort of frappuccinos and other stuff because now you're getting coffee with all the sugar. And the sugar is actually the most damaging thing that's there. It's these like weird coffee like products. I don't think it's coffee is coffee. Coffee's coffee. And then there's these coffee like products. So I love the intensity, the passion that it's being brought. And I want to make sure that we're also leaving people with a sense of, hey, they don't have to have it perfect to get the benefits of olive oil. Let's simplify this.

Let's simplify this. Let's simplify it. So going back to that list that was there, harvest date, origin. Check for a harvest date. It's fresh fruit juice. Should be fresh. Yeah. If it tells you what olives it's made with, that's a good sign.

It's just like a wine. Says the grate. You can make an educated guess. as to what it might taste like. And obviously you want it into dark bottle because light causes it to photo oxidize and degrade. Yep. And when you get it, you want to use it quickly.

If you buy a fresh olive oil, use it. Don't save it. Don't keep it in a cabinet for special occasions. Olive oil is a peasant food. And that's kind of what you get. Olive oil is not this highfalutin, sophisticated thing. Olive oil is the peasant food. It was in northern.

that it was butter and lard and these other types of fats that were part of this kind of nobility and the wealthy. And in southern Italy, where the olive trees dominate and olive oil is the primary fat, it's a much simpler peasant lifestyle. So olive oil is not sophisticated. It's a single ingredient fruit juice that is shelf stable that is healthy for you to cook with and finish with. It just degrades over time because it's a fruit juice. So just like you want your orange juice fresh, You just want to get some fresh olive oil. And when you taste it, not enough people are tasting their olive oil. So when you buy an olive oil, put it in a little spoon or in a little shot glass just a little bit and smell it and then sip it like scaldingly hot soup.

That will open the oil in the mouth and allow you to taste the nuances of it. Your face, if you do it in front of a mirror, your face will tell you if that oil is good or not. A great olive oil will be leafy and herbaceous and have notes of green tomato leaves or floral notes, hints of almond or banana. It kind of opens up and is really pleasant. And then you'll notice a bitterness on the side and then a delayed peppery finish in the throat. What causes that peppery sensation is oleocanthal, which is the natural antioxidant and polyphenol found in the oil and is considered an attribute of quality. So if you sip an oil and after like 10, 15 seconds, start coughing, that's actually a good thing. That means there's a lot of antioxidants and polyphenols in that oil.

And they even talk about one cough, two cough, and three cough oils in terms of intensity. So if you just get fresh oil, buy it at home or buy it, bring it home, taste it. It shouldn't taste like cured olives. It shouldn't be musty or have waxy crayon elements. It should be clean. it should be herbaceous, and it should actually be pleasant. And you always want to taste the oil on its own, and that will trigger ideas as to what you might want to pair that with.

So this is like olive oil is the simplest thing, and you can take it to as complicated as you want. And that's what makes it so fascinating and interesting is that it's for everyone. Lactose intolerant, vegan, vegetarian, carnivore. I don't know. I mean, to eat a steak and not. pour olive oil on it. It just seems crazy.

I agree. Okay, so here's another. So thank you for simplifying it. I want both options that are available, super into the weeds. And this goes with everything. And then also, here's the basics. Right. And don't be afraid to cook with it.

And don't be afraid to cook with it. You can put it in the pan and warm the pan and put your food in and cook your food. That's what olive oil is. Yeah. Well, let's pivot for a quick second. There's this whole world of competition. There's this whole world of expert tasters. You're one of those individuals. Although I want to say you've called me an expert a few times. Like, I really do consider myself a student and I'm constantly learning. Yes. All the time. And you are on panels and you're a judge. Is that correct? Yeah. So give us a little bit of the origin story around that. How do that end up happening where you actually have, you know, objectively,

one of the most refined palettes when you just look at the general population? Like, how did you get in this whole world about? That's a great question. We have a few minutes to get into this. Are you going to give me a Vladimir Putin answer on the history of, did you see the Tucker Carlson Vladimir Putin interview? I saw it happen, but I didn't watch it. Well, I'll keep it short. I got into olive oil. I took a trip. I had a, I have a degree

from the Berkeley College of Music. I used to have a record label, but I couldn't make any money. I didn't know what I was doing with that. And it was like 2006, 2007. And I took a trip from the Arctic Circle

down to the Sahara Desert with a backpack when I was 24 years old by myself with no cell phone, sleeping on overnight trains, meeting people sleeping on couches. And I just happened to be in Italy at the time of the olive harvest. And I was put in contact with this woman

named Nadia Gasparini Rossi in the town of Arezzo. And she took me under her wing, at this villa called Mulin Maria, which is an amazing villa in Tuscany, where they, they, it's surrounded by about six to eight hundred olive trees, and we harvested those olives and made this incredible oil. And then she, just over the years, I would go back and harvest with her, and she really became my mentor.

And I really kind of look up to her and look to her for advice. And she was the one who told me, you know, I see you're working in olive oil in America. I think you should become a certified taster, just to have it in your back pocket in case Anyone asks, like, what makes you think you know about this? It's like, if you're a certified taster, that would be really good. So she said, you should go to this school called, oh, now. It's in Northwest Italy. It's the Italy's oldest olive oil tasting school.

Wow. So I signed up. I flew over. I took it really seriously where two weeks before the course, I stopped drinking coffee, drinking alcohol, eating dairy or meat. I wanted to neutralize my palate, like completely. so I could sense the subtle details of these things. And then you do this five-day course?

It culminates in 16 different tests. Each test, there are 12 oils in front of you and an unknown. And only with your nose, you have to smell that and then put it in the correct order of intensity based on the defect. So only with your nose, do you have to kind of play chess with these oils and arrange them in the correct order? You have to do it 16 times. The first 12 are all with the nose and the last four are taste where you have to taste intensity of bitterness, which is like a brutal test. And you have to do that and organize them and make it correct. I took it really seriously and was really focused because I like taking thing.

I like getting into something and going with it as far as I can. That's really exciting to me. It makes you feel alive. And sure enough, to my surprise, I had the best score in the international class. And then it just so happened the very next year, like months later, was the very first New York International Olive Oil competition. And they were looking. They have experts flying from all over the world from Australia and France and Italy and Greece

and Chile and California. And they wanted one New York judge, one person who was from New York who was a judge. And they reached out to that school and found out who I was and found out that I finished at the top of that class. and then I was allowed to be on the judge at the New York International Olive Oil Competition. And then suddenly I'm tasting oils with these experts from around the world. And then that kind of opens up the door to them being invited to other taste panels and other judging competitions, which I've done that in Chile at the Soldoro Southern Hemisphere Competition.

And I do that annually in Los Angeles at the Los Angeles International Olive Oil Competition, where there's, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of oils are submitted. We taste the oils in a double-blind test. We have no idea what olive it is or what country it's from. They just come out with a code on them and we smell, analyze, and score them. So it was kind of a long journey of years and years from starting to harvest to starting to work in it, to becoming certified, to sitting on panels and tasting thousands and thousands and thousands of olives. And that's how you really get become an expert in anything. I don't think I'm some expert taster and some other thing.

I just think I have the sensory database in my brain after tasting so many that I can most of the time just smell it and compartmentalize it of in terms of intensity, in terms of flavor profile, in terms of being able to smell and taste and actually know, oh, this tastes like a Greek corinecki oil because it has that green apple skin note to it and being able to kind of develop a database. And the key element to that is you have to taste, taste, taste, taste, taste, and you have to remember. Because that sensory memory is what I bring to every single olive oil I taste in my life. And also when you taste some of these oils that are really Class A, the best of the best, you then know what that, how good it can be and what that standard is. And that's kind of what all oils are kind of up against is some of these great producers from around the world. And can I ask you a question on that? You are here in Los Angeles at a time where there's a competition.

It just happened or it's about to happen? Just happened. I spent the last three days drinking olive oil like 40 ones a day. What was the best in class olive oil in different categories? I don't know. I don't know. I'm a judge. I don't know.

So they didn't hand out awards yet? No. We have analyzed blind. Okay. We have submitted our scores. Got it. So it'll come out in a little while. And it comes out in a while.

But like, you know. Who won last year? Right. Well, there's, and there's not a winner. There's category winners. So there's best robust international, best medium international, best delicate international, best, robust domestic, best. It's, and then there's the Marco Mugelli Award, which is,

Marco Mugeli was his like famous Italian oleologist who founded, who was part of the initial inception of the Los Angeles International Olive Oil competition. And he passed away, I think in 2013, but he was a real visionary of quality of oil. and wisdom and education about oliveau. And now there's the Marco Mugelli Award. And that is only one producer. So the top scores and the different categories, then at the end, we taste all side-by-side blind and pick like the Marco Mugeli Award, which is like, out of the best of the best,

what do this panel of about 20 tasters from all different countries? What do they think is the best? That sounds like an overall winner to me. I mean, who won last year? And it varies year by year. I don't know one last year, but it's every year it'll be a different part of it. You'd think maybe Italy would win all the time. No, sometimes it's California oil.

Sometimes it's a Chilean oil. Sometimes it's a Spanish oil. So it varies. And it's interesting how one olive cultivar doesn't have a dominance in who wins. It varies year by year. And so much of this is based on weather. Yeah, for sure. So you can be a great producer and do everything right.

But they say, like, as in baseball, nature bats last. So can I ask you a quick question about that? So this competition is part of what organization? It's part of the Fairplex. And this is where I don't, I'm not a Native Californian, but this takes place in Pimona at the like Fairplex where they have this big fair every year. I think it might be the largest fair, like County Fair in America. And all the work we do by rating these oils, the winners of these oils are then presented

at the fair. and they get 750,000 people that go to that fair in the month of May. And there's a whole showcase of these oils. And people can taste the oils and learn about the oils and even buy the oils. So in a way, like the judging we do then celebrates and champions these incredible producers and allows people access to them to buy them and learn about them at the fair. So it's connected to the fair. So generally speaking, if something was part of that fair and we can link to the show notes, those are going to meet all the standards of the things that you had mentioned. Oh, yeah.

Okay, great. They're going to exceed the standards. They will exceed. So if it's a winner from this fair, you're pretty safe. You're in the world-class olive oils of the rarefied lipid. Well, in terms of world-class, you've made an entire career, both as, you know, I know you don't want to call yourself an expert, but, you know, that's what you are. Forever student. You're forever student. You're forever student. But you're trying to make it easier for people. and you've started a business to sort of highlight and put together some of the best olive oils

so that people can meet all those standards. Do you want to give a plug to that business? Yeah, the company is called Grove and Vine, and what we do is we chase the harvest northern and southern hemisphere to get fresh olive oil every six months in an ever-evolving selection of producers that I curate. And I'll fly over at the moment of harvest and tour a region, taste from the master tanks, and then purchase the exact cultivar or tank that I will. want. We'll airship that back to the states. I bottle it stateside to verify that what I ordered is accurate because if it came bottled, I wouldn't be able to verify that. It gets bottled in front of me. And then we deliver it direct to your door nationally and internationally. And the company is

called Grove and Vine. So it's all about super fresh oil delivered swiftly to your door by some of the great producers of the world. Every oil comes with a scroll that has the history of the producer, region, cultivar, flavor profile and wine pairing notes, as well as a

regional recipe of how you could use it, as well as a photograph that I shoot of the grove because I've always thought when you

have a really amazing olive oil, if you can see it and learn about it and taste it fresh, that's sort of as close as I could get to bringing

someone to a grove but have all that just in one box delivered to your door. That's awesome. And so every month you get a different box? Every three months.

Three months. And then remember, enough olive oil for you to go through a bottle of month. Right. And we also sell magnums of olive oil, which are 1.5 liter glass, like really celebratory ones. And then we also do three liter bag and box oils if people want larger quantities. It's a great gift idea, too. It's a great gift idea.

And you can do custom gift notes, which get typed on a vintage typewriter on bond stationary paper and get included with that oil. So it's like, it really is the gift that keeps on giving because you gift it once. every three months, more oil comes. But you could also buy individual bottles. And then members have access to discounted bottles pending availability. So what happens is we send out an oil. And when people like it, they then buy a handful of bottles extra because they love it. And they want to kind of stash up or they want to buy it and then gift it to people.

But I didn't realize this when we launched a business, but about 30% of our orders are gift orders. And I just didn't think it would be that big. But gifting olive oil is such a beautiful thing because you don't know if people drink wine. you don't know what dietary restrictions they have, but like gifting nice olive oil. I have somebody that I need to get a gift for who did me a favor recently. And I was like, you know, this is actually going to be a perfect gift to give to them. You know, and I'm not even sure how into olive oil they are or aren't. But everybody's looking for like a unique gift, something to stand out to say that I'm so thoughtful that I got you something that is off the beaten path, but generally is going to be celebrated by most people.

Exactly. Yeah. That's incredible. So that's what's been, are you the main operator of the business as well? what's been something that's been way easier than you expected? And what's the toughest part of being somebody who's operating a business, a small business growing and, you know, getting the word out? I grew up skateboarding. I'm a big skateboarder. I'm used to falling and picking myself back up and trying it again. And I think the hardest part about being an entrepreneur or any business owner

is the ability to persevere past what you think you can do. And if you have enough passion for something, then you can actually pour your blood, sweat, and tears into it and outwork someone else who isn't passionate about it. Because oftentimes at some point, they'll run into a roadblock and they stop. They're good discourage. And the trick is, is to, when you approach your roadblock, crack that code, get past that roadblock, and keep moving forward.

If you're passionate about something and care about something, don't let anything stop you from doing it. And that's been something that was really big. And I think I learned that from skateboarding because the whole idea of skateboarding is you fall hundreds of times before you land a new trick. So it's something that rather has been tough for other people. But because of your background in skateboarding, you've had tenacity and you've persevered, which is there's going to be roadblocks, but you still move forward. And I did it on my own terms. that's a big thing. Like we have no investors.

Yeah. We're not, we're not, we don't have to answer to anyone. And when I launched the business, if anyone was out there trying to maybe launch a business or something, I was working three jobs when I launched my business. And for the first two and a half years of my business, I continued working my business. I had another job and another job. And so I didn't have to worry about making every penny. I didn't have to worry about capturing every penny of profit in my business.

because I had income coming in. I could build my business into something that then was of excellent quality, exactly something that aligned with my moral value system. And then once it got big enough, then I could just hop over and focus on it fully. If you build it, they will come. You put your, you know, you drew a line in the sand and said, I'm going to stand for quality. I'm going to stand for transparency.

And putting your content out there, people found you. And now you do this full time. Is this your main thing? Full time. I'm also in a band with this guy, Action Bronson. We're called Dr. Baclavah and the human growth hormone. And we tour the world. It's a badass name.

Play shows. And last time I was in L. I was in L.A. in October, we played Hollywood Bowl. That's incredible. So I have that too, which is now the second hobby job. And then, but olive oil really is my focus in life. And it's such a joy to share. Like olive oil changed my life.

It changed the way I cook. It changed the way I eat. It's allowed, it's been my passport to the world and has allowed me to connect with people that I never thought I'd be able to orbit in those circles, but olive oil is the connection. Yeah. And to be able to share olive oil with people provides me with just such a deep sense of satisfaction and being able to empower them to enjoy food more. Yeah. Because olive oil isn't about olive oil. Olive oil is the most generous food because it goes with all the other.

their fruits. Well, on that topic of empowerment, I want to thank you for coming on the podcast, Nicholas, and empowering our audience to step more into the most studied fat for its benefits in the history of humanity, something that everybody can benefit from. And again, I opened up this podcast talking about you being a champion and ambassador, the hype person, so to speak. If olive oil was a rapper and was on stage, you would be right next to it sort of being the hype man and letting everybody know why we need more of it in our lives. And you did that on today's podcast. Again, remind us of where the business is. And before you do that, actually, I want to say, thank you for talking a little bit about the business, would have been the tough parts and the

hard parts. Because what I've found is that also as an entrepreneur, and this podcast is something that I do on the side, is when you get healthy and when you start to improve your own health and then your family's health, you start to think about, wow, how can I make a difference in the world and also do something that I'm passionate about? And if I can make money at it, amazing, right? And you've had your own version of that that came together with your business. So even though this isn't a podcast about entrepreneurship, my audience loves to support small businesses, right, and people who are really maintaining that integrity to quality. And they love to hear the background because it plants a seat in their head that, you know, you didn't come from some, you know, long legacy of business

owners. You weren't handed a check and from your dad and had the money to go start a business. You just figured it out. And now you have this thriving business, which congratulations on that. So if that plans a seed for them to go do that in their own world, then that's an exciting part of the conversation as well. So yes, please remind us of what the business is. I think you have a discount code for our audience as well if they want to, you know, partake. And then how can they follow you on your journey of finding the best olive oil in the world. Oh, cool. So yeah, you just go to www.grovenvinevine.com and you can buy olive oil. We deliver it direct to your door nationally and internationally. You can use a discount code. We're giving you $20 off a membership,

either a small bottle membership or the Magnum membership, $20 off by using the promo code DP24. At checkout, it'll automatically deduct the 20 bucks off. You can get it for yourself or as a gift to someone else. And that's for annual memberships or one-year memberships. And what's the last question? And on a personal level where they can follow along with you? Oh, I'm on, you follow me on Instagram at oleologist or at Groven Vine or if you do the Facebook Twitter thing like Nicholas Coleman at Facebook. And always feel free to write us at info at grovenvine.com. And I will personally get back to you. Any questions you have about olive oil. My whole thing is I want to demystify this because it's such a lovely, wonderful thing to incorporate into your life. And I genuinely believe

one of the easiest ways to improve your life every day is incorporating fresh, high-quality olive oil into it. And some good quality salt. That's going to make the food pop. Pop. That's what we all want. Nicholas, thank you. We have the links and the discount code in the show notes below. Super appreciate you joining us on the podcast today. Thank you so much. It's a novel. Hi, everyone. Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much. for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app.

And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share it with a friend. Share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about.

It's my weekly newsletter. And it's called Try This. Every Friday, yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy-to-digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health. We cover everything from nutrition to mindset to metabolic health, sleep, community, longevity, and so much more. If you want to get on this email list, which is, by the way, free and get my weekly step-by-step protocols for whole-body health and optimization, click the link in the show notes that's called Try This. or just go to Drew Perot.com.

That's D-H-R-U-P-U-R-O-H-I-T dot com and click on the tab that says, try this.